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Description

An organization of metro Detroit bus riders and our allies, working together across city and county lines to unite bus riders in a movement for better public transit service, and so bring about transportation freedom.

Past Events

The Motor City Freedom Riders, along with our allies Support Detroit Transit, MOSES, the Ecology Center, Detroit Jews for Justice, and others, are rolling out a coalition to build support for regional transit among municipal leadership in the suburbs north of 8 Mile. Our supporters among top Wayne County officials believe that moving local leadership of these communities, especially in Oakland's second ring of suburbs, is the best shot we have at bringing the county executives around to allow regional transit back on the ballot. This approach will also lay the groundwork for SMART opt-in campaigns while shifting the broader narrative that Oakland and Macomb residents don't want transit.
On February 26, we will be hosting an open meeting in Ferndale to plan our strategy and get transit supporters engaged in this important fight. Please join us! We need all the help and support we can get.

With each passing week, the future of a four-county RTA proposal seems bleaker and bleaker. The missed deadline for an agreement among the Big Four this January and L. Brooks Patterson's unequivocal rejection of a regional transit plan in his State of the County address are not encouraging. While we will keep organizing north of 8 Mile and fighting for a transit system for the entire region, it is time to put plan B—a regional transit proposal between Wayne and Washtenaw Counties—into motion.
Join us for our Wayne County transit organizing meeting to plan our strategy for getting a Wayne-Washtenaw regional transit proposal on the ballot this year. This is a campaign we know we can win—we just need to your help.
We will be in the Cass Commons parlor from 6:00 to 7:30 pm, and food will be served. All are welcome! Public Meeting.

We would like to report back from the Rally for Regional Transit, the RTA Board's retreat, and other meetings around the region on a number of important developments for public transit. We'll be planning our response to these developments and signing people up for our Media, Finance, Strategy, and Policy Research Committees, as well as introducing our summer transit fellowship program.
Food will be provided.

The 3-mile QLINE streetcar, a $140 million project that duplicates existing bus service, is opening May 12 to a planned celebration by “local officials and dignitaries.” Meanwhile, those same officials and dignitaries continue to do nothing about the ongoing transportation crisis in our region, as thousands of us are stranded by the lack of adequate transit service in the city of Detroit and the suburbs.
We can’t let the region’s rich and powerful continue to evade responsibility for taking action for real regional transit. We need to send a message that we will hold them accountable for taking steps to improve transit: most importantly, by placing another regional transit measure on the ballot for voters to approve in 2018, and putting their full support behind that proposal.
Join us in a rally for real regional transit that addresses the needs of bus riders and the broader public, not just the profit margins of developers. Stay tuned for details on the rally time and schedule.